8,000 artists churning out Van Goghs

VAN GOGHS, Turners, Da Vincis and Klimts pour off the easels of China’s most unusual assembly line.
The owner of New Century Oil Painting is in high spirits. A day earlier, Si Gong packed up her latest shipment of oil paintings, dozens of replicas of works by Joshua Reynolds and of John Singer Sargent, for a customer in London.

British buyers favour what Ms Si calls the romantic classics and she is sure they cannot find better value for money than in her shop in a grimy corner of the southern Chinese city of Shenzhen.

Ms Si gestures to the walls of her shop where replicas of Canalettos jostle for space with a large canvas of Napoleon by David. “Our biggest customers are in America and Italy. The British don’t want so many, but they want the best,